Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Busy Before the Downpour

Busy..... SHOPPING!!!! Ok, no Versace here, but Vermicompost, more containers for my plants, and a few herbs. I got my containers at kmart.
Then, I headed to the Union Square Green Market. There were lots of stands set up in Union Square, as there are every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Many had potted plants, flowers, herbs, and vegetables.

The herbs caught my eye... 3 for $5. How could I resist? Such difficulties I've had starting my own rosemary! And these smelled so good. So I grabbed myself an English Thyme, Orange Mint, and Rosemary (left to right in pic). Lovely! When I got home, I repotted the thyme and rosemary in 6" pots and transplanted 2 small basil seedlings I've grown into the leftover pots.
Then, I headed over to the Lower East Side Ecology Center's stand. I indulged myself and bought 3 20lb bags of vermicompost for $10 each. $$$! What can I say, it's all for my baby plants! I plan on getting new worms for my wormbin from them in a couple of weeks. They have a really great program for encouraging environmental conciousness in Manhattan.

When I got up on the roof today, I saw great improvement from just the last couple days! Very exciting! My watermelon seedlings, which had just come out of their shells yesterday had completely unfolded, and grown. They must really love that heat and moisture provided by the repot and the cloches. Here's a pic from the top of the Coke bottle cloche:

And, perhaps most exciting was that my tomatoes have BABY TOMATOES!!! They are so young! But these tiny little globes are definitely tomatoes. Both of my plants have flowers, but this particular plant is the potato leaf heirloom variety, Stupice, known for being "early".
Besides repotting the herbs, I dragged 2 of the bags of vermicompost up to the roof and my cat litter pans, which I'll be using for low growing items. I mixed up a slurry of Water-Keep super-absorbent crystals and mixed a good deal of them into vermicompost to fill 2 of the litter pans. Then, I got through transplanting 9 baby cosmos when the sky turned dark and opened on me! I didn't get anymore pictures before I had to run downstairs and hide from the rain. Here's a shot of the downpour:

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